Post by petrolino on Aug 26, 2017 0:48:33 GMT
The twisted film noir 'Born To Kill' is known as 'Lady Of Deceit' here in U K and it's be easy to see why if you witness it. Boarder Helen Brent (Claire Trevor) is angry and bitter having just come through a divorce but she's keen to map out a new life for herself so she goes to stay with her foster sister Georgia Staples (Audrey Long). She's followed by mentally unbalanced stalker Sam Wilde (Lawrence Tierney) who may be connected to a crime committed at Helen's former lodging. Landlady Mrs. Kraft (Esther Howard) hires private detective Albert Arnett (Walter Slezak) to pursue the truth at all costs.
The damaged crime thriller 'Born To Kill' is one of Robert Wise's more cynical genre entries, with little in the way of morals and plenty when it comes to motive. Wise elicits terrific performances from Esther Howard as zany landlady Mrs. Kraft, Walter Slezak as canny investigator Albert Arnett, Audrey Long as flighty heiress Georgia Staples, Elisha Cook Jr. as prickly snoop Marty Waterman, Phillip Terry as rich putz Fred Grover, Tony Barrett as arrogant chick-magnet Danny Chapman and Lawrence Tierney as senseless brute Sam Wilde. The paranoid cast are probed, pushed and punished by Claire Trevor at her most duplicitous as devious divorcee Helen Brent, a molten rock of pocket dynamite who's as dishonest as she's delectable. I think mention must also go to RKO Pictures favourite Isabel Jewell as society girl Laury Palmer, this noir becoming a key influence upon the original version of 'Twin Peaks' alongside influential genre pictures such as 'Laura' (1944) and 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950) ; that show's co-creator David Lynch was heavily influenced by the unsettling work of Wise's buddy Mark Robson when making 'Blue Velvet' (1986) earlier in his career, a film that owes a particularly strong debt to 'Peyton Place' (1957).
'Born To Kill' is intelligently blocked and beautifully designed. During a jarring double-murder, Wise employs a refrigerator door and experimental lighting to great effect, setting the scene for things to come. Wise's use of deep-focus compositions and double-negatives spells trouble for the entire vicinity in this dark and dreamy thriller with a cold, metallic edge.
'RENO - THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD'
The Claire Trevor School Of The Arts
"Simon Callow writes in his biography of Orson Welles that Welles saw "Stagecoach" 40 times before he made "Citizen Kane." The two films are hardly similar. What did (Orson) Welles learn from it? Perhaps most of all a lean editing style. (John) Ford made certain through casting and dialog that the purpose of each scene was made clear, and then he lingered exactly long enough to make the point. Nothing feels superfluous. When he deliberately slows the flow, as for a song performed by Yakima (Elvira Rios), the wife of an outpost boss, we understand it as the calm before a storm. (Howard Hawks uses a quiet song by Dean Martin in the same way in "Rio Bravo.") Ford never makes the mistake of cutting so quickly that the sense and context of an action sequence is lost. The extended stagecoach chase always makes sense, and he allows his camera to be clear about the stunt work. Consider this extraordinary stunt: An Apache leaps from his own horse onto the stagecoach team, straddling the lead horses. He is shot. He falls between the horses to the ground, and the horses and stagecoach pass entirely over him. No CGI here; he risks his life."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
"Raw Deal is great for Claire Trevor’s hauntingly disillusioned voice-overs accompanied by a hauntingly disillusioned theremin."
- Doug Dibbern, 'Mann Power : The Director As Worker'
The Claire Trevor School Of The Arts
"Simon Callow writes in his biography of Orson Welles that Welles saw "Stagecoach" 40 times before he made "Citizen Kane." The two films are hardly similar. What did (Orson) Welles learn from it? Perhaps most of all a lean editing style. (John) Ford made certain through casting and dialog that the purpose of each scene was made clear, and then he lingered exactly long enough to make the point. Nothing feels superfluous. When he deliberately slows the flow, as for a song performed by Yakima (Elvira Rios), the wife of an outpost boss, we understand it as the calm before a storm. (Howard Hawks uses a quiet song by Dean Martin in the same way in "Rio Bravo.") Ford never makes the mistake of cutting so quickly that the sense and context of an action sequence is lost. The extended stagecoach chase always makes sense, and he allows his camera to be clear about the stunt work. Consider this extraordinary stunt: An Apache leaps from his own horse onto the stagecoach team, straddling the lead horses. He is shot. He falls between the horses to the ground, and the horses and stagecoach pass entirely over him. No CGI here; he risks his life."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
"Raw Deal is great for Claire Trevor’s hauntingly disillusioned voice-overs accompanied by a hauntingly disillusioned theremin."
- Doug Dibbern, 'Mann Power : The Director As Worker'
The damaged crime thriller 'Born To Kill' is one of Robert Wise's more cynical genre entries, with little in the way of morals and plenty when it comes to motive. Wise elicits terrific performances from Esther Howard as zany landlady Mrs. Kraft, Walter Slezak as canny investigator Albert Arnett, Audrey Long as flighty heiress Georgia Staples, Elisha Cook Jr. as prickly snoop Marty Waterman, Phillip Terry as rich putz Fred Grover, Tony Barrett as arrogant chick-magnet Danny Chapman and Lawrence Tierney as senseless brute Sam Wilde. The paranoid cast are probed, pushed and punished by Claire Trevor at her most duplicitous as devious divorcee Helen Brent, a molten rock of pocket dynamite who's as dishonest as she's delectable. I think mention must also go to RKO Pictures favourite Isabel Jewell as society girl Laury Palmer, this noir becoming a key influence upon the original version of 'Twin Peaks' alongside influential genre pictures such as 'Laura' (1944) and 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950) ; that show's co-creator David Lynch was heavily influenced by the unsettling work of Wise's buddy Mark Robson when making 'Blue Velvet' (1986) earlier in his career, a film that owes a particularly strong debt to 'Peyton Place' (1957).
"Born in Winchester, Indiana, Robert Wise was the son of a meatpacker and his wife. He had to abandon his college journalism studies because of the depression, and, at the age of 19, he headed for Hollywood. His brother worked as an accountant at RKO, and got him a messenger's job in the editing department there. After picking up sound effects and music editing skills, Wise became an assistant editor. In a few years, he had become one of the studio's top editors and was assigned to assist Welles on Citizen Kane (1941). Only a year older than Welles, he had acquired a wealth of experience in cutting films, and was indispensable to the debutant film director, his editing making a significant contribution to the film's artistic success. Especially effective was the newsreel, News on the March, in which he simulated archive film footage drawn from many periods; in some cases, he even scratched the film deliberately by dragging it over the cement floor of the editing room. Wise's bold editing is also distinguished in the famous sequence in which Kane's marriage is encapsulated in three continuous breakfast scenes, spread over several years as the couple drift further apart. A year later, while Welles was working on It's All True in Brazil, he left Wise to assemble the final footage of The Magnificent Ambersons back in Hollywood. The film was over budget, over schedule and over long, and the RKO bosses insisted it be cut down after preview audiences became restless and impatient, and the majority of opinion cards were unfavourable. Wise cabled Welles in Brazil: "The picture does seem to bear down on people." Welles replied that he would only make cuts if Wise came to Rio with the print. The studio refused, and Wise and his assistant, the future director Mark Robson, found themselves holed up in a motel, working day and night to keep the audiences in the theatres. The picture was cut from 132 minutes to 88, with scenes transposed or replaced in order to make the story tighter, speedier and clearer. Wise later said: "Since Ambersons has become something of a classic, I think it's now apparent we didn't mutilate Orson's film." Unfortunately, Welles accused Wise and others involved in the "desecration" of betrayal. Only those who saw the original version can judge whether it would have been even more magnificent without Wise's editing. Wise, like Robson, started as a director making chillers for Val Lewton. When the low-budget RKO producer became dissatisfied with the work of Gunther von Fritsch on the dreamlike Curse of the Cat People (1944), he replaced him with Wise, who was editing the film. Though he shared the credit with Von Fritsch, Wise directed most of this tale of terror, whose title had little to do with the film."
- Ronald Bergan, The Guardian
"A clear illustration of why the movies are sometimes held in low esteem by people who are thoughtful of their influence is the Palace's "Born to Kill," which is also an apt demonstration of why critics sometimes go mad. For this crime-flaunting melodrama from the left hand of RKO is not only morally disgusting but is an offense to a normal intellect—and we say this with no more piety or conceit than is average, we feel sure. In the first place, the story is malignant, being a cheap and unsavory tale of a hard-hearted murderer's fascination for a self-seeking divorcee. And, although such a smeary tabloid fable is hot entirely unfamiliar on the screen, in this particular instance it is of noticeably negative worth. But, more than that, the whole atmosphere and detail of corruption is so indulgently displayed that it looks as though the aim of the producers was to include as much as possible, within the limits of the Production Code. Lawrence Tierney, as the bold, bad killer whose ambition is to "fix it so's I can spit in anybody's eye," is given outrageous license to demonstrate the histrionics of nastiness. And Claire Trevor as the lustful lady is permitted to conduct herself, especially in some scenes with Mr. Tierney, with surprising indecorum and lack of taste."
- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
Lawrence Tierney
- Ronald Bergan, The Guardian
"A clear illustration of why the movies are sometimes held in low esteem by people who are thoughtful of their influence is the Palace's "Born to Kill," which is also an apt demonstration of why critics sometimes go mad. For this crime-flaunting melodrama from the left hand of RKO is not only morally disgusting but is an offense to a normal intellect—and we say this with no more piety or conceit than is average, we feel sure. In the first place, the story is malignant, being a cheap and unsavory tale of a hard-hearted murderer's fascination for a self-seeking divorcee. And, although such a smeary tabloid fable is hot entirely unfamiliar on the screen, in this particular instance it is of noticeably negative worth. But, more than that, the whole atmosphere and detail of corruption is so indulgently displayed that it looks as though the aim of the producers was to include as much as possible, within the limits of the Production Code. Lawrence Tierney, as the bold, bad killer whose ambition is to "fix it so's I can spit in anybody's eye," is given outrageous license to demonstrate the histrionics of nastiness. And Claire Trevor as the lustful lady is permitted to conduct herself, especially in some scenes with Mr. Tierney, with surprising indecorum and lack of taste."
- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
Lawrence Tierney
'Born To Kill' is intelligently blocked and beautifully designed. During a jarring double-murder, Wise employs a refrigerator door and experimental lighting to great effect, setting the scene for things to come. Wise's use of deep-focus compositions and double-negatives spells trouble for the entire vicinity in this dark and dreamy thriller with a cold, metallic edge.
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